This is the true year of Kenneth’s possession of the Pictish kingdom, and it is with this year that the Pictish Chronicle commences his reign. Here we are told that ‘Kinadius, son of Alpin, the first of the Scots, governed Pictavia happily for sixteen years. Two years, however, before he came to Pictavia, he acquired the kingdom of Dalriada.’[[431]] The name of the father of Bred, the last king of the Picts, is not given in the Pictish Chronicle, but in the later chronicles he is called Brude, son of Ferat, and his reign limited to one month. He is followed in these chronicles by three kings whose reigns amount to six years. These are Kinat, son of Ferat, one year; Brude, son of Fotel, two years; and Drest, son of Ferat, three years; and the latter is said to have been slain by the Scots ‘at Forteviot according to some, and at Scone according to others,’[[432]] and he is followed by Kenneth mac Alpin, who reigns sixteen years. This would bring his accession to the Pictish throne down to the year 850, and this is in fact the era upon which all the late calculations as to the duration of the kingdom of the Scots are based. It is possible that these kings may have existed and maintained a six years’ struggle with Kenneth before the last of them was slain; but they rest upon authority which cannot be considered trustworthy. The length of the reign assigned to Kenneth of sixteen years by the same chronicler is quite inconsistent with the introduction of these supposed kings; and the year 844 remains as undoubtedly the true era of the accession of the Scottish race to the Pictish throne. In the seventh year of Kenneth’s reign over the Picts, or 851, he is said in the Pictish Chronicle to have transferred the relics of Saint Columba to a church which he had built.[[433]] This was no doubt the final carrying out of the arrangement by which the supremacy of Iona was to be transferred in Ireland to Kells, and in Scotland to Dunkeld. It is there that Kenneth had either completed a church begun by Constantin, or founded a new church, and a portion of Saint Columba’s relics was now transferred to each place. The subsequent events of Kenneth’s reign are given in the Pictish Chronicle in very general terms. He is said to have invaded Saxonia or Lothian six times, and to have burnt Dunbar and Melrose, usurped presumably by the Angles, while the Britons are said to have burnt Dunblane, and the Danes to have laid waste Pictavia as far as ‘Cluanan’ or Cluny and Dunkeld.[[434]] There is, however, no record of these events to be found elsewhere.
The Gallgaidhel.
During the latter years of Kenneth’s reign, a people appear in close association with the Norwegian pirates, and joining in their plundering expeditions, who are termed Gallgaidhel. This name is formed by the combination of the two words ‘Gall,’ a stranger, a foreigner, and ‘Gaidhel,’ the national name of the Gaelic race. It was certainly first applied to the people of Galloway, and the proper name of this province, Galwethia, is formed from Galwyddel, the Welsh equivalent of Gallgaidhel. It seems to have been applied to them as a Gaelic race under the rule of Galls or foreigners; Galloway being for centuries a province of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria, and the term ‘Gall’ having been applied to the Saxons before it was almost exclusively appropriated to the Norwegian and Danish pirates. Towards the end of the eighth century the power of the Angles in Galloway seems to have become weakened, and the native races began to assert their independent action. The bishopric, which had been founded by the Angles in 727, ceases with Beadulf, the last Bishop, about the year 796; and William of Malmesbury tells us that he could find no record of any subsequent bishop, because the bishopric soon ceased being situated in the remote corner of the Angles, and having become exposed to the attacks of the Scots or Picts.[[435]]
In the Islands Landnamabok we are told that ‘Harold the Fairhaired, king of Norway, subdued all the Sudreys or Western Isles, so far west that no Norwegian king has since conquered farther except King Magnus Barefoot; but he had no sooner returned than vikings, both Scottish and Irish, cast themselves into the islands, and made war, and plundered far and wide. When King Harold heard this he sent westward Ketill Flatnose, the son of Bjarnan Bunu, to reconquer the islands.’ Ketill departed for the west, and subdued all the Sudreys. He made himself king over them.[[436]] The Laxdaela Saga, however, makes Ketill a petty king in Norway, who left it on the extension of Harold’s kingdom, and on arriving in Scotland with his vessel, was well received there by men of rank, as he was both a celebrated man and of high descent. They offered him any possessions he pleased, so that Ketill settled there with all his kindred. Ketill, however, must have settled in the Sudreys before Harold’s time, as his daughter Audur married Olaf the White, who became king of Dublin in 852; and in 856 we find a notice in the Ulster Annals of a great war between the Gentiles and Maelsechnaill along with the Gallgaidhel who were with them, and in 857 a victory by Imair and Amlaiph, against Caittil Finn with the Gallgaidhel in Munster.[[437]] Caittil Finn is no doubt the same person as Ketill Flatnose, and the Gallgaidhel those Scotch and Irish vikings whom he had brought under his authority. There is no doubt that the name of Gallgaidhel was applied to the Gaelic population of the Western Isles called Innse Gall or the islands of the Galls, and the name, which originally belonged exclusively to the Gallwegians when under Anglic dominion, was extended to the islanders when under that of the Norwegians. In the fragments of Irish Annals published by the Irish Archæological Society, we are told that in 852 ‘a battle was given by Aedh, king of Ailech, the most valiant king of his time, to the fleet of the Gallgaidhel. They were Scots and foster-children of the Northmen, and at one time used to be called Northmen. They were defeated and slain by Aedh, and many of their heads carried off by Niall with him; and the Irish were justified in committing this havoc, for these men were wont to act like Lochlans;’ and again, in 858, that ‘the Gallgaidhel were a people who had renounced their baptism, and were usually called Northmen, for they had the customs of the Northmen, and had been fostered by them, and though the original Northmen were bad to the churches, these were by far worse in whatever part of Erin they used to be.’[be.’][[438]]
The name, however, as applied to a territory, continued to be exclusively appropriated to Galloway.
The Pictish Chronicle adds that Kenneth died ‘tumore ani,’ on the Ides of February on the third of the week, in his palace of Forteviot, on the river Earn, and this fixes 860 as the year of his death. St. Berchan says of him—
Seventeen years of warding valour,
In the sovereignty of Alban,
After slaughtering Cruithneach, after embittering Galls,
He dies on the banks of the Earn.[[439]]